One of my favorite things to do is talk with other ham radio operators through satellites or the International Space Station (ISS). To do this,
I stand on a rooftop and tune a handheld multiband radio while tracing the
orbit of a satellite or the ISS with my homemade yagi antenna.

Orbiting satellites such as AO- 51, SO- 50, and AO- 27
act as repeaters, relaying signals from low-power
transceivers like mine back to hams elsewhere on
the planet. So if you know where to aim the antenna,
you can communicate around the world via space.

The ISS also has a repeater, and occasionally,
when we’re lucky, the astronauts themselves
exchange transmissions to communicate with
hams on the ground.

To listen to these signals from space, you don’t
Photography by Diana Eng